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From: Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: in praise of type checking
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:18:39 -0400
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On 10/7/2011 3:43 PM, Roedy Green wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Oct 2011 06:43:04 -0700 (PDT), Lew<lewbloch@gmail.com>
> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said :
>
>>
>> It must not have been that widely used, then, if all the uses were in the o=
>> ne project.
>
> It was widely used within the project. It is internal code I use for
> generating references to bookstores/books/electronics at various
> online stores.
>
> Even if it were widely distributed, and even if it were a public
> method, type checking at least warns my clients I have changed the
> signature of a public method without warning them. They may want to
> shoot me, but at least they know precisely WHY they want to shoot me.

     Even in my private code that I never intend to distribute to
anyone at all, I make a point of changing something's name if I change
its nature.  That's seldom onerous, because a change in nature usually
means the old name is no longer appropriate:

	/* old */ boolean isImportant() ...
	/* new */ float[] isImportant() ... // say, what?

-- 
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid